Remember Aibo the $1500 robotic dog – Sony is bringing it back to compete with Amazon Echo

Remember Sony Aibo, the cute little robotic dog from the late 90s? It might have gone out of production for more than a decade now, but the lovable Consumer Robot Hall of Famer is all set to make a comeback. The Japanese electronics giant has been hinting for a while that it wants to get back into the consumer robotics space. And according to a report out of the Nikkei Asian Review, Sony is reassembling the former Aibo team members who still work at the company to develop a new version of the bot for the age of smart assistants.

This new Aibo-like robot is said to be the first of a number of consumer offerings from Sony designed which will take on the AI-powered home products from the likes of Amazon, Google and Apple. There isn’t much information available on the device at this stage, but it’s expected to be a consumer robot in a canine form with the features like that of Amazon Echo. Nikkei says that Sony will open up the bot’s proprietary software to let third parties add features much like they can add “skills” to Amazon’s Alexa. One of the biggest reasons why the original Aibo failed is that it was an expensive device which didn’t really any functional value. With the advancements in the Artificial Intelligence space over the last few years, the new Aibo robot equipped with the latest technology might make for a brilliant AI-powered personal assistant.